This Soul with Sorrow Laden
by SomewhereApart
Summary: Robin goes looking for Regina on All Hallows Eve, and finds her with a furry friend. Missing Year. For SpookyOQ, day 1: Black Cat


For SpookyOQ, day 1: Black Cat

* * *

Robin is used to All Hallows being observed, but never quite like this.

Usually, it's a time for masked banquets and offerings to those who've passed on, a time of reflection more than of celebration. But it seems things were different in the Other Land, because autumn arrives and with it the castle becomes festooned with cottony faux cobwebs, bats and spiders made from paper and leaves and paint, pumpkins all gutted and carved into beaming, toothy lanterns (Roland loves those in particular, had been blissful at the slimy, seedy mess of excavating stringy insides with the help of no less than Prince David himself), linens draped over gourds with ovals painted on for eyes and mouths. He's told they're to be ghosts, but they bear no resemblance to the real thing as far as he's concerned.

And ghosts are very real in the castle these days. Spectres haunting from the shadows, rising up in the quiet moments, unsuspected, and lashing out at those around them.

There have always been ghosts here for Regina, he knows – the parents long dead in the crypt, the untold scores of victims who fell to her wrath, the King whose sarcophagus lies empty (it's a secret he's kept for her – that empty tomb, the bones of her husband scattered to the mercy of animals decades past, picked over by dogs as he ought to have been; Snow White pays visit to nothing but air and nobody knows except Robin and the Queen). But there is something about this season, something about the festivities of Hallowe'en, that seems to haunt her doubly so. She is foul-tempered, and sharp-tongued, vicious in her words and scarce in her presence.

For weeks, she has grown darker and darker, a shadow-walker herself now, a ghostly remnant of the vibrant woman she'd become through the summer months (never happy, not that, but there'd been a liveliness to her, and a slow-growing kindness that surfaced now and again for a lucky few; time may not heal all wounds but it teaches us how to hide the bleeding).

He'd realized the reason for her darkening moods that day with the pumpkins. He'd been grinning at his son, the boy slick from fingertips to elbows with pumpkin guts and never happier, his grin stretching wider and wider as the Prince had told him about other Hallowe'en traditions – costumes and candies and tricks and treats.

It's a holiday for children.

No longer an observance of things lost, but a celebration of fantasy and sugar and mischief. A time for adults and children alike to frolic and stuff their gullets full of tasty treats.

But what of those who have no children?

Not all ghosts are dead, he thinks, and the most damning of Regina's lives on, across a veil seemingly even more impassable than the one between life and death. A boy who somewhere, sometime, is carving his own pumpkin, and choosing his own costume, and anticipating his own treats – without her.

Anticipation rises and rises in the castle halls, and Regina is dragged down and down with every passing day. He wonders if anyone else has noticed. He wonders, sometimes, if anyone else looks after her. Snow White, surely, but there's a masked banquet to be planned – a ball this year, a festival even, with games and dancing and much to be decided, much to be planned. The Princess's mind is in other places these days, lighter places, an almost manic drive toward revelry underscoring her daily agenda. (The Princess shines in pain while the Queen's light gutters out.)

He skips the party.

Roland attends, surely. Robin sees to his costume (a knight, he'd settle for nothing less), and delivers him to the grand hall, tucks him away with a knot of other children all taking turns at attempting to stick a cloth tail onto a pillow shaped like a donkey's rear end. But he leaves him there in Belle's capable hands, and goes off in search of ghosts that don't say _BOO!_ or bear a striking resemblance to the table linens.

He checks all the obvious places: her chambers (unlikely, he knows – Snow had been adamant she attend the ball, Regina equally adamant she would do no such thing), the east library, her orchard, even dares creep his way into her crypt. There's a small shrine there, four squat candles burning, and the thick, smoky scent of incense still smoldering a hazy pillar that curls around the low ceiling. (Robin takes a moment to murmur a quiet blessing, a charm for souls departed; these returned travellers may no longer observe the Hallows but he still does and so, it seems, does the Queen.)

But there's no sign of Regina.

He checks dungeons, and untended gardens, and even that empty tomb, all to no success.

He finds her, finally, when he stops in search of a drink, his throat parched.

The stablemaster keeps a bottle of wine tucked away in the tack room, he knows, and won't miss a sip or two. And it's just there ahead, not twenty paces off his path.

He finds more than wine in the dim-lit shadows. A voice, soft and sad, murmuring quiet nonsense from an empty stall. He has the bottle still in hand as he goes to investigate, but he'd know that voice anywhere.

There she sits, Regina, leaning against a stack of hay bales, hands in her lap, head down. At first, he thinks she's speaking to nothing, to herself, to the ghost of a young boy not yet dead but never again to her keeping, but then he sees the movement. She's dressed all in black, but simply - her gown a solid swath of it, now flecked with clinging bits of hay and dusted with the dirt from the ground she sits on. But there, in the hollow of her crossed legs, there's a glint of light, a flash of amber; the Queen's slender finger wiggles, the painted tip disappearing into ebony fur.

A kitten.

He's happened across Regina, the former Evil Queen, playing with a kitten in the stable on All Hallows. It seems the night is full of surprises for them all.

She hasn't noticed him, or she's studiously avoiding – either a likely option – so he steps more fully into the doorway of the stall, shuffles his feet slightly to make his presence unmistakeable.

Her head snaps up; hadn't noticed him, then.

She is utterly unmasked, her face unpainted aside from the pink flush of emotion, the rosy tip of her nose, the bloodshot red of eyes only recently dried of tears. Her hair is down and untied, draped over one shoulder in loose waves. He hasn't seen her like this since the illness, hasn't seen her without her usual war paint – dark stain for her lips and smoky kohl around her eyes. Without the pallor of fever and desperation, he finds her naked beauty rather alluring. The monarch that broods over the council chambers and castle hallways smacks of intimidation and power, but this Regina is a bit more… human. And perhaps, he hopes, a bit more open to kindness.

He clears his throat and lifts the bottle in offering. "Care for a drink, milady?"

She "Oh"s, and then straightens her spine. She's about to tell him to head back the way he came, he thinks – but more inventively and with more threats involved.

But she doesn't, not this time. Doesn't even bother to correct the erroneous title he'd bestowed upon her; her usual _It's Your Majesty_ stays trapped behind silent lips. Instead, she slips on a mask of her own making, a subtle shift into derision and boredom (it's ill-fitting, transparent), and mutters, "I think I'll need more than one."

Robin takes that as invitation enough and makes his way to her, settling beside her in the hay and leaning back with a sigh. He holds the bottle out to her in offering. Regina takes it one-handed, and drinks deep. The kitten in her lap gnaws at the thumb of her other hand, sharp teeth and sharp claws pricking against her skin, but she doesn't seem to notice.

He's drawn to the line of her throat as she gulps and gulps. Feels twin threads of sympathy and desire tug at his middle – she's downed almost a quarter of the bottle before she lets it fall with a gasp, no doubt trying to drown out whatever tortured feelings have urged her to seek solace with the animals. But even knowing her pain, he can't help but wonder what that graceful column of neck might taste like, how wine would taste from her lips.

But now isn't the time to discover such things, he thinks. Not on All Hallows. Not here in the dim lantern light of a stable.

"You're missing the party."

Her voice is brittle and flat, her dark eyes sullen as they meet his own. She hands the wine back his way and Robin takes a sip for himself before shrugging a shoulder and getting more comfortable against his pile of hay. A piece pokes sharply into his back, but he pays it no mind, just shifts until the discomfort abates.

"I may be old-fashioned," he tells her, "but I was raised to believe that All Hallows was a time for remembrance more than a time for half-drowning yourself in a barrel of water and pears."

She snorts indecorously, a gesture so unbefitting a queen that he can't help but grin. Is she drunk, he wonders, or just comfortable in his presence? After nearly a year together in the castle, and a dozen other nights just like this one (when solitude and melancholy find them, when the stars arrange themselves just right in the heavens, when they're drawn together in the late hours like tide to shore), he hopes it's the latter.

"They're supposed to be apples," she informs, and he tilts his head curiously. "The pears. They should be apples."

She draws her fingertip down a soft, furry belly, and Robin watches tiny claws stretch and hook and grasp again. Regina doesn't so much as flinch.

"But nobody trusts the apples here," she sighs, and then, "I suppose I can't blame them, considering most of the nearby tenants are Snow's people, and, well…"

She gives him a knowing look, one that says _We all know what happened there_.

Robin nods in response, unbothered by the reference to her past misdeeds. No use in being scandalized by that which the victim seems to have forgiven.

"It wasn't even my apple, you know," she murmurs, ducking her head down closer to the furry critter in her lap, her hair a dark curtain that throws her face into stark profile. Heaven above, she really is beautiful… "The cursed one."

The kitten has gone suddenly alert at the tantalizing fall of her hair, its tiny paws rising to bat at the dangling strands.

"I didn't know," he replies, almost absently, his attention focused on the slope of her nose, the softness of her bare lips. He ought not to dwell on her, he reminds himself. This is a night for indulging the dead, not the living. So he forces his attention back to her eyes (what he can see of them anyway) and inquires, "Whose was it, then?"

She spares him a glance, a look up and through her lashes that might seem coy from anyone else, but she accompanies it with a wicked flash of teeth, a grin of mischief as she tells him, "Maleficent. By way of a certain blind witch."

And then that gleeful malice fades, it, too, a mask she seems unable to fit properly to her countenance. The kitten draws her attention again, scrabbling at the ends of her locks and then wriggling, flipping over in her lap, the very picture of playful abandon.

Her voice is an absent murmur when she adds, "All my apples are safe. But then you'd know that."

Robin has the decency to duck his head in guilt. He and Roland have sampled apples in her orchard more than once, his boy drawn by the promise of sweetness just out of his reach, Robin by the allure of forbidden fruit waiting to be plucked. He'd never been one for following the rules, after all, nor keeping his hands off the property of others. And he's seen her munching on them time and again, her own willingness to consume such a weapon assuring him of their poison-free status.

"Roland has a fondness for apples," he excuses, knowing her soft spot for the boy will earn him pardon by proxy. Sure enough, Regina's lip curls in the shadow of a smirk, a quick thing, over and then done, leaving behind an air of melancholy, of longing.

"Henry loved them, too," she whispers, "when he was young. Before he learned the truth." Her head lifts slightly, or maybe only tilts, but it draws her hair out of the kitten's grasp, and he flops about for a moment before his eyes light on the ruffle of Robin's shirtcuff. The kitten goes still and intent, and Robin braces himself for the inevitable capture of his own hand to claw and fang. "After, he wouldn't touch them."

The wee thing's pounce is impressive, if a bit foolhardy, a clumsy leap that has the little devil plunking nearly head-first into the bottle propped against Robin's thigh instead of landing properly on his arm. But he's young, then, he's time to learn.

Robin scoops the tiny body up one-handed; Regina liberates the wine. A swapping of parcels, it seems – her livestock for his spirits.

She sips instead of gulps this time, and Robin leaves one hand resting surreptitiously nearby his more tender parts as needle-sharp teeth assault his fingers, the fleshy spot beneath his thumb, kitten claws tangling up in his cuffs, scraping his wrist (the idea of an errant claw to the bollocks is a sobering one, to say the least). He tamps down the urge to hiss, a sudden masculine need to not be bested by a sullen Queen keeping his discomfort quiet.

She picks at an invisible bit of dirt on the neck of the wine bottle, cradles it in her lap like a babe, and Robin suddenly feels bad for the kitten's migration. She's a mother without a child, and he wonders if the wee one's attentions had been a terribly poor stopgap to soothe the gaping hole in her heart.

"Do you want him back?" he asks her, grimacing at a slice of claw on the tender skin of his inner wrist. What happened to the docile little furball she'd been stroking when he'd arrived?

"No." Her smile barely reaches the corners of her own lips – much less her eyes – so weighted with sadness, and there's a distance to her gaze as she says thinly, "He's happier there."

"He's carving me for supper," Robin attempts to jest, anything to tease a true smile from her. It doesn't work, but he thinks there's a twinkle of something in her eye for half a moment.

"He knows you're easy pickings." He recognizes the haunt of ridicule in her voice and thanks the stars for it – he'll take her barbs tonight, if they'll serve as a distraction to her grief. "Too tender, easily chewed up."

"Ah, I see. And you were, what, then? Too tough for his milk teeth?"

She nods, shifting the bottle to lean against the hay between them and drawing her knees up, crossing her arms atop them. "All gristle and bone," she tells him with surety. "Not a bit of tenderness left to gnaw on."

"I think we both know that's not true," he tells her, and she looks to him, tightens the grip of her fingers over her elbows, then becomes studiously absorbed in something outside their little nest. Staring and staring past the stall's open door. He'd said too much, it seems. Broken the jest of pretense by acknowledging its underpinnings.

He lets her have her silence for a moment, shifting his attention instead to the beastie in his lap, taunting it with wiggling digits and drawing them away at the kitten's every renewed attempt to dine on his flesh.

"Does this little carnivore have a name, then?" he asks, before the quiet between them stretches too long.

"Binx."

"Binx, hmm?" It's less a question, more a curious declaration. "That's an odd name."

She smiles, or tries to; it comes out more like a grimace as her shoulders lift and fall with a labored breath.

"There's a movie. Henry loved it, it's… for Halloween. _Hocus Pocus_ ," she explains, squinting a little across the stall as she recalls, "It's about these teenagers who accidentally awaken three witches who've been kept dormant for centuries, and they wreak havoc in their modern town. And there's a talking cat, Binx."

"A talking cat?"

There's much from the Other Land that Robin would quite like to see, movies among them – he wonders what kind of magic must be required to make it seem as though a cat can speak.

"He was a boy, the witches cursed him to be a cat," Regina explains.

"I see," Robin says before hissing in pain. The little critter he'd not been paying nearly enough attention to has taken momentary advantage of his lack of focus, capturing Robin's hand in gripping claws and kicking feet, slicing gouges in it as his teeth sink into the fleshy place below Robin's thumb. "Little devil," he curses, trying to draw his hand away, but only succeeding in riling the little butcher up even further.

Regina chuckles, and he looks up in time to find her watching with genuine mirth in her eyes. It seems his inability to keep a handle on such a wee charge as a young kitten is quite amusing to Her Majesty.

Still, the pain in his hand doesn't seem a large price to pay for the way she bites at her lower lip and then reaches over, plucking away the devious beastie and plopping it onto her knees. It's back where it belongs, as far as Robin is concerned. Best he be returned before he shreds Robin's hand to ribbons.

The kitten wobbles a bit in an effort to find purchase and balance atop Regina's kneecaps, and is not successful in the slightest—it's but a moment before wee Binx is tumbling forward and down her shins.

Robin watches as the little thing scrabbles for purchase in the queen's dress, one of her hands shooting out to scoop it up under its rear before she lowers her knees, crosses her legs again, and deposits the flustered little fluffball in the hollow of her lap.

Binx seems quite pleased to be there, rolling over onto his back and busying himself once again with her teasing fingers. Robin can see thin red scratches, tiny raised welts along her smooth skin, but Regina doesn't seem to be at all bothered by the minor injuries her new charge has bestowed upon her.

He wonders if he's gone soft living inside these castle walls, or if she's grown too numb. She'd plucked her own heart once, he's heard, in an effort to dull her agony. Perhaps the nip and slice of minuscule claws pale in comparison to the ache within?

It's a terribly sad thought, one on which he doesn't particularly wish to dwell, so he tries to distract them both with a question: "Does he survive the movie, then? Binx, the cat."

"He does," she tells him with another of those sad smiles. "They vanquish the witches, and his soul is freed at last. He's reunited with the sister he was unable to save from her fate at the witches' hands so long ago."

Robin thinks of Marian, of his mother and young sister, and remarks, "That sounds a lovely fate, if you ask me. I like to think that it's so, that in the end we get to rise to the heavens and sit amongst the stars with those we've lost."

Regina's gaze drops to the kitten again, the little devil now making a meal of the knuckle on her third finger.

"That would be nice," she murmurs, in a hushed and rueful tone that speaks plainly of how unlikely she must deem such a fate for herself. That distance has returned to her features, that mask of unease, and Robin wishes he could turn back the clock a few moments and swallow his words down before they ever had a chance to slip from him.

The dead and lost are fresh in everyone's minds tonight – everyone not engaged in bobbing for apple substitutes and pinning tails on donkeys, that is. He should have known better than to bring up such a thing on a night such as this one. Not with the carefully lit candles burning away deep in the castle, or with the half bottle of wine poured down her gullet here beside him.

"I think you'll see them again," he tells her quietly.

It would be better said that he _hopes_ she will, because they both know that her sins will weigh heavily on the scale of judgement. She may well descend to the depths rather than rise to the heavens, but he'd rather not think of that. He finds the idea of her in eternal torment or solitude far more distressing than he has any right to.

"Perhaps," is all she says. Quiet. Blank. Unconvinced.

Robin's heart aches and aches, his fingers itching to reach for her own, his mind searching for something he might say to ease her sorrow. Nothing comes, though.

Binx has managed to get himself quite tangled up in her skirts during the last few moments of frolicking and thrashing about; Robin watches the Queen come to his aid, dutifully shifting the fabric until his little head pops up again, wee paws dragging him up, up, out of her lap and intrepidly over her legs toward the straw-strewn stable floor.

Regina watches him venture away, a bit of straw his new target. He chases it, pounces upon it, flops about like a mad little thing, and all the while those deep brown eyes watch him, all the while Robin's eyes watch her.

She really is remarkably lovely, the Queen…

And kind tonight, it seems, for she's holding out an open palm (her attention still on the kitten) and urging, "Give me your hand; I'll heal the scratches."

They've beaded up with blood, throbbing warmly, but they're not serious as far as wounds go. They'll heal on their own just fine.

But Robin's not one to overlook such a gesture, leastways not from her, so he surrenders his palm into her care.

Regina looks away from the kitten, her soft fingers sliding gently along Robin's. (They're cold, her hands; it's a brisk night. For the first time it occurs to him that she might catch a chill in that simple dress of hers, and he can't help the little swell of worry beneath his breastbone.) A moment later, there's a sort of crackling tickle across his skin, warm and pulsing before it fades and takes all evidence of his humiliation at the hands of a kitten with it.

Robin curls his fingers around hers (a risk, for certain, but he's never been afraid of such), giving them a squeeze and a sincere offer of thanks.

Regina nods and—much to his pleasant surprise—does not remove her hand from his, so Robin lets their pressed palms come to rest against her knee.

"Why the stables?" he asks after another few moments spent in silence.

It costs him her hand.

She draws it back, crosses her arms over her middle tightly and stares hard at the kitten dancing wildly with his piece of straw in front of her.

When she answers, it's to tell him, "I knew Snow wouldn't come looking for me here – or if she did, she wouldn't try to talk me into leaving." She swallows heavily, her lips pinching, voice dropping to just above a whisper. "My true love died in a stable, and it's All Hallows. She may be all about the spooky wonder of Halloween, but she still has respect for the dead and grieving."

Her quiet confession has a lance of guilt spearing through him. She'd been here in observance of one lost, not simply avoidance of all the revelry, and here he'd come and barged in like a buffoon. He should have asked that question of her from the start, should have left her to her solitude.

Robin draws a breath to apologize, but never gets the chance – the Queen is already speaking again, jutting her chin toward the kitten, and telling Robin, "And his mother died today. Trampled by one of the horses, along with his brothers."

His jaw drops slack, stunned, his attention drawn to the kitten playing happily on in front of them.

"How awful," Robin murmurs. "And odd, for a barn cat. They're usually so good at keeping out from underfoot."

"Yes, well," she sniffs, her spine straightening in a way that's terribly regal. "One of those idiot tenants Snow insists we let live on the grounds, and dine in our hall, and have free fucking reign of the place—" she's angry about what happened, spitting fire as she speaks of it "—got it in his mind today that he should take Cyclone for a little ride around the pastures. He didn't even make it out of the stables; Cyclone despises everyone who's tried to ride him – he's simply not _tame_. He was wild too long; I don't care whose prized stallion he was before the curse."

Regina huffs a little, and pushes at her hair – she's been arguing for the release of the jet black stallion for months, he knows. Or at least, for him to be left to gallop about and graze as he pleases without anyone trying to saddle him up.

And with good reason, it seems.

"He didn't make it out of the stable, but he did manage to make it close enough to where Penelope's kittens were playing, and she's a mother, so of course she rushed to protect them." Her jaw clenches, shifts, tears welling in her eyes and then blinked immediately away; she hasn't stopped watching the kitten play in front of them. "They got caught underfoot and were trampled – along with the idiot on Cyclone's back. Nobody told me about the cats until after they'd found me and had me unbreak that fool's femur – and of course, I was in no hurry, because it was his own damn fault. By the time they told me, Penelope was just so miserable…" Her gaze shifts, empties, goes somehow bottomless and impenetrable all at once as she confesses in a whisper, "I took away his mother."

Gods above. No wonder she's been sitting here, her rear end surely having gone numb from this hard ground (his certainly has), the chill seeping through her dress, her hands slowly carved by kitten claws. She'd been summoned as executioner on the Hallows of all days.

He imagines now that she considers the bites and scratches due penance for her crime – she would, Regina, even though as far as he can see, there's been no crime committed. Not by her, anyway.

"You took away her pain," Robin tells her gently, reaching out in an attempt to grasp her hand again only after she lifts it to wipe away a traitorous tear from her cheek.

She lets him, but her fingers stay limp in his, her voice brittle and thin as she says, "He should know his mother. She should be there for him. He shouldn't forget her."

Robin's quite certain she's not speaking only of the cat.

His fingers squeeze around hers and hold, his heart quite at a loss for how to comfort her properly. He wants to assure her that the kitten seems none the worse off at the moment, but he doesn't want her to think the same of her boy – that he's just fine somewhere with a different mother, the woman who raised him now inconsequential. It would be both a comfort and a heavy pour of salt into already raw wounds, he's certain.

So Robin simply rubs her fingers, her palm, her wrist. They're icy; he tries to draw warmth into them with friction and sheer will.

"Binx is safe," Robin says, finally. "He doesn't appear… traumatized."

Regina lets out a single, wet chuckle and leans back further against the hay bales, reaching for the bottle of wine he'd all but forgotten was still wedged between them.

"The stablemaster says this little boy has a habit of sneaking off and causing mischief. He wasn't sure what had happened to him until he emerged from halfway up the wall of baled hay, yowling and hungry but none the wiser." She sips at her wine again and says, "They gave him a saucer of warm milk, and he trotted back off to his bales. But that was hours ago, and he needed supper; everyone else is up at the banquet."

"So you came," Robin realizes, looking around the stall again and noticing this time the tiny crystal bowl nestled in the hay nearby. She'd come to see that Binx didn't go hungry. "You brought him his supper."

"Yes, and…" she glances up, above them, and he wonders how he didn't see it before, the little signs of her true reason here tonight hidden all around. There above them floats three little lights, flickering blue flames in what looks to be soap bubbles. Magic. "I thought someone should remember them, too. Penelope, and the other two kittens. They shouldn't be forgotten."

She'd lit them each a candle, of sorts. A little light to guide them home. If he's not careful, Robin thinks he could fall terribly in love with the Queen's tender heart.

"I think that's lovely," he says to her, waiting until her attention slides back to him to add, "Truly. Not many would think to honor them."

She swallows thickly, casts her gaze down, away. A little clearing of her throat, and she tells him, "They'll burn out once they use up all the air. I didn't want to risk… anything else happening in the meantime."

Fire, he thinks. More death at her hands. She can leave candles to burn in the cold stone of her vault, but not here, not amongst all this hay and wood.

"And I thought… When they go out, it'll be dark," she murmurs. "It's already after nightfall, he has to miss her soon. She won't be there when he sleeps, he might get frightened, or cold. He'll certainly be lonely. He hasn't realized yet that she's gone."

Her eyes are damp again, that mother's heart rooted firmly in her chest crying out for the wee orphaned thing. Crying out for something to fill it, always.

He's a poor substitute for the child she'd lost, but this little fellow needs care and Regina needs something to nurture. She makes do with Roland as best she can, Robin knows, but it's not nearly the same, and the giddy childish energy of a young boy seems so often to wound her as much as restore her.

"He needs a mother," Robin says to her, and her brow knits. "He's too young still to be a mouser; the mice are nearly half the size of him. You should bring him up to the castle, let him practice on spiders in your chamber."

Let him curl up in front of the hearth and become a lap cat, but somehow he thinks she'll balk at that.

Sure enough, she's shaking her head, and saying, "He's a barn cat. He wouldn't like it there."

As if on cue, Binx abandons the bit of straw he'd been gnawing at and hops his way back over to Regina, offering a little squawking mew before she's scooped him up in her hand again and helped him over the hump of her crossed legs. He finds that well between them and curls up there, wiggling a bit and then beginning to knead at the inside of her thigh and purr softly. It seems he's spent from all his hunting and devouring.

"I think you may be mistaken, Your Majesty," Robin taunts in jest, "It looks as if the comfort of your keeping is exactly where wee Binx would like to be."

She smiles a little at that, another weak, melancholy thing, before she's letting free a little sigh, and conceding, "I suppose I could move him to the castle. For a little while, at least. While the weather is cold, and he's out of family to keep him warm."

"I'm sure someone can find him a warm quilt, or a cozy fur to curl up in."

She has both, he knows. Plus that warm hearth fire, and, he suspects, a welcoming divot alongside the heat of her own body should the kitten require it.

Robin leans over a bit, dares to reach out and scratch the beastie's furry belly (heavy amber eyes turn his way, but the claws and teeth stay safely put away for the time being).

"What do you think, little one?" he asks. "Would you like to leave this poor stable behind and enjoy a life of leisure alongside Her Majesty?"

Binx tucks his head down against his paws, sleepy eyes sinking shut, and so Robin looks up at the Queen with a grin.

"I think that's a yes," Robin declares.

Regina simply chuckles hollowly and shakes her head at him. But one hand has sunk itself into the kitten's soft fur, cupping his little body protectively. Robin thinks they'll do just fine together, the orphaned kitten and the lonely Queen.

Silence befalls them after that, words apparently spent and dried up as all those cottony cobwebs in the hall.

When she speaks again, it's to ask of him, "What brought _you_ to the stables?"

"Oh," he answers with a little smile, nicking the wine from her and taking a quick sip, licking the taste of it from his lips before he shrugs and says, "I came looking for you."

Her face softens ever so at that, a quiet, "Oh," falling from her lips. "Why?"

"It seemed a shame for someone so obviously hurting to pass the Hallows alone," he says, adding, "I hope I didn't overstep my place," for good measure.

"You did," she tells him archly, but there's a tension in her lips that quickly slips into a smile for the briefest of seconds before flickering out. "But I don't mind, tonight. Just don't make a habit of it, thief."

He already has, and they both know it.

Still, Regina relaxes back into the hay, reaching for the wine with one hand as she drops her gaze to the kitten snoozing in her lap. She sips, and then offers Robin the bottle to do the same in turn.

And there they stay, side by side, passing the wine back and forth until it runs out. Keeping vigil over those slowly dying flames above them until those die out, too.

In her lap, Binx purrs and sleeps soundly.

It's a somber affair, but he'd not trade the company, nor would he prefer the revelry of the castle's masked banquet to the croak of frogs and rustle of horses around them. It feels right, this quiet observance of All Hallows, this sitting with ghosts, both fresh and far away.

Robin's not fool enough to think a bit of company and a new pet are enough to exorcise the haunting that's taken root down deep inside the Queen. But he hopes that for tonight, at least, they've managed to let in a bit of the light.


End file.
